We were not exactly wowed by Nina Dobrev back in her days on Degrassi, but instead of staying in her little teen bubble (like fellow Degrassi alum Shenae Grimes, who is terrible on 90210), she has really grown into the role of Elena. Better still: she’s even more amazing when she’s playing the truly evil vampire Katherine. Double our viewing pleasure.

NINA DOBREV chats with torontosun.com and tells her double duty as Elena Gilbert and Katherine Pierce on Vampire Diaries.

“I called my mom, and she and I translated it,” Dobrev said of the Bulgarian dialogue in the episode titled Katerina.

“I think the writers had used an internet translator and it was so funny. All those online translators are never right. So we did it. I translated my own dialogue, but I called my mom just to confirm I was right.

“I worked really, really hard on that (episode),” added Dobrev, on the phone last week during a rare day off from shooting. “I really got to play the four different characters. And it was great to play the innocence of pre-vampire Katherine, when she was just a normal human.”

Dobrev has been particularly busy with dual roles this season on The Vampire Diaries, which airs Thursdays on CW and A.

When Dobrev mentioned “four characters,” she wasn’t exaggerating. There’s Elena; there’s modern-day Katherine; there’s 1800s Katherine, seen many times in flashbacks; and now 1400s Katherine and her Bulgarian dialogue has been added to the fray. With regard to all the heavy lifting, Dobrev said she’s fortunate everything has happened gradually.

“I’ve done it in small baby steps,” Dobrev said. “I’ve been given a lot of opportunities in different parts of my life, starting in Toronto with Degrassi, then the bit parts in movies that I did, and now The Vampire Diaries.

NINA DOBREV has admitted that she accidentally scared a young fan of Vampire Diaries. “I play Elena, who’s the sweet girl next door, and then I play Katherine, who’s this manipulative, kind of confident, spontaneous crazy girl,” she said on Lopez Tonight.

“There was this one case where I had this little girl and her mum come up to me and her mum was like, ‘Hey, look, honey, it’s the girl from The Vampire Diaries – it’s Elena’. And the girl looked at me because I was wearing this big period dress that Katherine normally wears, and she said, ‘No, mummy, no, no, no, that’s Katherine. I don’t want to go near her, she’s going to bite me’.”

Dobrev continued: “She was this little girl and she was so cute and she was running away and I just wanted to hug her and I couldn’t.”

The Vampire Diaries returns for a new episode on December 2 at 8/7c on The CW.

Where you know her from?

Nina Dobrev is a Bulgarian-Canadian actress. She played the role of Mia Jones, the single teenage mother on Degrassi: The Next Generation, from the show's sixth to ninth season. She currently stars as Elena Gilbert and Katherine Pierce on The CW television teen drama The Vampire Diaries.

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